As the shrinking of semiconductor devices progresses, it is desirable to form fine patterns that are finer than the resolution limit of the lithography. As one of a method for realizing this, a so-called sidewall transfer process has been proposed in which a sidewall film is formed on the sidewall of a sacrificial film (a mandrel) having a line configuration that is formed by lithography; and subsequently, the sacrificial film is removed to leave the sidewall film.
The sidewall film is formed in a loop configuration at the longitudinal-direction end of the sacrificial film. In the case where the interconnects, etc., of the foundation are patterned using the sidewall film as a mask, the longitudinal-direction ends of the interconnects also are formed in a closed loop configuration. In other words, the loop portion of the longitudinal-direction ends of a pair of mutually-adjacent interconnects are cut by using the process prepending to occur short of via the loop portion.